The invention relates to a device for retaining the freshness of cut flowers, with the device adding nutrients to the keep-fresh liquid wherein a carrier is provided for the nutrients for directly delivering the nutrients to the keep-fresh liquid.
To date, cut flowers are usually kept fresh by regularly changing the keep-fresh liquid, normally water. While for certain types of flowers, there are fertilizers available that can be added to the keep-fresh liquid; whereby then only water may be refilled in order to realize a good nutrients efficacy. Such an addition of nutrients is unpleasant to handle, and oftentimes, the appropriate fertilizer is not available when fresh flowers are presented, for example by a visitor.
The configuration of the above-stated type and known from the DE-OS 38 09 121, includes small paper rolls that are soaked with preserving chemicals and integrated or placed in the bound bouquet. These small paper rolls may also have a color that matches the bouquet. The conventional configuration suffers the drawback that the small paper rolls may already release the chemicals when being placed into the bouquet, whereby the moist or wet stems, as typical in cut flowers, are directly exposed to the chemicals in relatively high concentration, which may even lead to damage of the plant tissue in the contact area. The extracted fertilizer substances are possibly also released into the surrounding paper which soaks up the liquid so that the fertilizer substances are no longer available for fertilization of the keep-fresh water.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,167,832 discloses a prepared banderole with bactericidal surface-active and/or nutrient-containing active substances. It is not possible to directly integrate this carrier into the bouquet, but is wrapped around the bouquet and releases, as already described above, the active substances prematurely in some cases directly onto the moist flower stem, thereby causing damage thereof. Furthermore, in many cases, banderoles wrapped around the flower bouquet are oftentimes removed when watering the plants, so that in this case the banderole for fertilization of the keep-fresh water would not be available.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,842,539 is directed to a container which is intended for placement onto the flower stems and contains an ion exchanger resin which is separated from the actual flower stem by a gauze layer. This ion exchange resin reduces the physical blocking of the water-conducting tissue and thereby assists to keep the flowers in fresh condition. In particular, the blocking of the lower end of the flower stem as a result of drying out or rotting is delayed.